In Second Visit To UP In A Fortnight, Why PM Is Starting With Azamgarh

Prime Minister Narendra Modi starts his two-day eastern Uttar Pradesh visit today, his second to this part of the state in a just over a fortnight – this time he will visit Varanasi, Azamgarh and Mirzapur.

But it is the choice of Azamgarh as the venue of his first public meeting on this trip, that has drawn the maximum headlines in the last few days. Azamgarh, has been a dark spot for the BJP – a party that swept the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in UP but lost the Azamgarh seat to former Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav. In the 2017 assembly polls, the BJP routed Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP almost everywhere else in the state, but in Azamgarh’s 10 assembly seats, it managed to win just one – conceding the rest to now allies Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati.

And that is why, BJP sources say, the party wants to focus extensively on winning Azamgarh in Lok Sabha 2019 – it is a prestige battle for us, party sources say. One way…